Terry Tempest Williams

A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, Terry Tempest Williams has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. She is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and many other works of impassioned and lyrical prose, including Leap, An Unspoken Hunger, and The Open Space of Democracy. Her newest book is When Women Were Birds. After discovering that her mother had kept journals, Williams was shocked to find that the cloth-bound books lining shelf after shelf were blank. When Women Were Birds is a graceful and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother’s journals and the question of what it means to have a voice.